ALA Convention 2008
By Patrick Miller
August 2008 Issue 42
This years American Livebearer Association convention was held in San Antonio. The trip was very much worth the time and expense that it took. There were three of us from GVAC that attended the convention. Along with me, Tom Beach and Scott Tetzlaff also made the trip. Unlike in previous years where the convention started on Friday afternoon and ended on Sunday this convention started on Thursday morning with a tour and a collecting trip.
Thursday’s trip consisted of a morning tour of Goliad Fish Farm which Charlie Clapsaddle was gracious enough to open up to convention attendees. He does a great job of raising some high quality fish. It was an unusual farm as he does not use large in ground ponds to raise his fish but uses raised ponds and drums with continuous recirculated water that is run through a vegetable filter. After the farm tour we were treated to some Texas BBQ. Following our lunch we went collecting fish in Coleto Creek which is not far from Goliad Farm. Collecting was a lot of fun and I did not lock my keys in the car.
Of the fish collected were;
Gambusia affinis,
Poecilia latipinna, sailfin molly
Cichlasoma cyanoguttatum, Texas Cichlid, one small male by me,
Palaemonetes paludosus, ghost shrimp
And unknown, at least to me, species of sunfish, darters, bass and killifish.
Friday’s trip was just as fun as Thursday’s trip. We started with an all too short tour of the Xiphophorus Stock Center on the campus of Texas State University in San Marcos. From there we went to the San Marcos River for more collecting. The water in this river was very clear and it was fun to do some snorkeling. I am not sure what fish people were collecting since I did lock my keys in my car. I then did a very bad job waiting for AAA to unlock the car which forced me to wait twice. I did, however, collect Poecilia latipinna and Poecilia formosa (Amazon molly) females from a muddy pond that was in danger of drying up.
The rest of the weekend went by far too quickly. Because of the long distance to the convention site for most of the attendees there was relatively little in terms of room sales. Knowing this might be the case I took along some Aspidoras and some cherry red shrimp to sell along with my plants and livebearers. I also entered the show with a few fish and more than a few photographs. Unfortunately my prized pair of Characodon lateralis died during the trip from Michigan to Texas. I did keep alive and enter into the show a great Xiphophorus birchmanni male, male Ilyodon whitei and pair of Ilyodon xantusi. The birchmanni easily won best wild type swordtail, he was the only entrant in the category. The two other awards that I received were for my photos. Third place was a picture of a male Skiffia multipunctata and first place was one for a picture of a male Ilyodon xantusi.
Outside of the convention we managed to visit some pretty interesting fish stores including one little hole in the wall that had a great selection and great prices on some nice fish. For the trip I ended up buying more egg laying fish than livebearers but wasn’t disappointed.
I think San Antonio was the right place to have the convention even though Grand Rapids would have been much more convenient for the majority of ALA members, especially those of us from GVAC. I am looking forward to next year’s convention which will be held in either Indianapolis or Rhode Island.